


Palm Springs

by sternenrotz



Category: The Horrors (Band)
Genre: AU, Anachronic Order, Awkward Sex, Drunk Sex, Emotionally Repressed, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Roommates, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenrotz/pseuds/sternenrotz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys and Joe are flatmates who also happen to be fuck buddies. or fuck buddies who also happen to be flatmates, whichever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palm Springs

**Author's Note:**

> titled after "I'm Low on Gas and You Need a Jacket" by Pierce the Veil.
> 
> Joe is technically underage in the first sex scene according to American law, but of age in Britain. (also, I changed their age difference by one year to make the plot work more smoothly.)

The first time they meet is when Joe is seventeen and Rhys is nineteen and working part time at this shoddy little record shop. This is the kind of quiet autumn day where it's not actually raining but it feels like it is, everything is grey and windy, but not so grey and windy as to be really bothersome.

It's a quiet day at work, as well, although even on good days, the shop isn't remotely close to being "busy", but right now Rhys is three and a half hours into his shift without a single customer in sight. He's this close to getting up and reorganising all the records by year just to kill time when the door opens and this kid walks in.

The kid, Rhys guesses, must be a couple years younger than he is, most likely still in college, skinny and wide-eyed and with that seemingly innocent look on his face. They exchange the customary “hi” “hello” before the kid moves to the back of the shop and starts flipping through the singles rather aimlessly, and Rhys watches, half in amusement, for a couple of minutes before he remembers his retail worker etiquette and calls out, “you searching for something specific?”

“Just looking around, actually,” the kid calls back, without even bothering to look up from where his hands are moving, and Rhys most definitely isn't staring at the kid's hands, either, at his long fingers and worn down nails, he isn't.

The kid comes up to the register after a couple of minutes, singles in hand, and Rhys rings him up. “That'll be twenty-five quid, then,” he says, the usual dialogue, and again, he's not paying any attention to the way the kid is biting his lip when he struggles to pull a couple of rolled up pound bills from the pocket of his tight trousers. “Would you like a bag?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Rhys pulls a plastic bag from the space below the register and carefully places the records inside. “You've got really good taste in music.”

“Thank you,” the kid says, and he smiles, just quickly, without showing any teeth, but it lights up his whole face and Rhys smiles back without really meaning to.

“I run this club night every other weekend,” he says, once again, the usual dialogue he pulls out whenever he gets a customer who likes the same bands as he does, “the Junk Club, you'd like it, I'm sure. You should stop by sometime.”

And the kid laughs, actually laughs, and shifts his bag from one hand to the other. “Heard of it, actually. I've not got a fake ID though, so...” He trails off.

“Well, I could get you in.”

Rhys says this because he says it to every customer who's interested as well, and it's most certainly not because he wants an excuse to get to know the kid's name. He's definitely not having filthy thoughts fuelled by months of going without sex over a kid who isn't even old enough to get into clubs.

“Tell the bouncers you know me, I'll let you in, I'll tell them you're eighteen.”

“I'll think about it, then.” The kid extends a hand and continues, “I'm Joe, just so you know.”

Rhys shakes it with his own and says, “I'm Spider Webb,” but then immediately feels a little silly for it, so he adds, “call me Rhys.”

The kid's – Joe's – hand is a little clammy and his grip too tight, typical awkward schoolboy handshake, and Rhys drops it a little too quickly.

“All right. Rhys,” Joe says, and Rhys can _see_ that everything is making him a little bit uncomfortable, “I guess I'll think about it. See you around, then?”

“Yeah, see you around.” Rhys smiles again as he watches Joe exit the shop, and even though the weather outside is still dreary, the prospect of sitting on his arse behind the register for another two and more hours has just become a little less unappealing.

–

(Joe comes to Junk the next Saturday night and Rhys lets him in, as promised. He ends up drinking more than he can really handle and taking a bunch of pills he got from a sleazy-looking guy in the men's toilets, and then Rhys has to let him crash on his sofa. Even then, though, when he wakes up at an ungodly early hour of the morning, or well, afternoon, to the sound of Joe emptying his stomach contents into the bathtub, Rhys doesn't regret this. He doesn't regret not going home with the bloke who kept giving him looks from across the dance floor and who could probably handle his liquor way better and who was actually _legal_. No, instead of regretting, Rhys stumbles into the bathroom, legs still wobbly with sleepiness and being hungover, and tells Joe where to find the paracetamol and the teabags in the kitchen.)

–

(That's the story of how they first met how Rhys remembers it, and how they've both come to tell it when people ask. How Joe remembers it, though, it's a different story.

This is a couple of months before the time in the record shop, and Joe is at a cheap gig of some Cure tribute band because it's a weekend and there's nothing to do and this is the only gig nearby that he can actually get into. The band's actually good, though, the singer does his Robert Smith impression with this mildly psychotic tinge in his voice and the guitarist uses way more squealing distortion than the original songs do, and altogether, it barely sounds like the Cure at all, but, it works.

Yeah, the band is good and Joe would be having a good time as well, if it weren't for the fact that somewhere behind him, this guy keeps clapping and yelling along to every single song. His voice is loud and braying, enough that Joe can pick it out through the crashing of the instruments and enough that it annoys the piss out of him, he swears, that guy is singing along to the _instrumental parts_ , and he appears to be either trashed off his face or completely tone deaf. For a couple of minutes, Joe tries to drown it out, but after he's barely made it through an atrocious wailed version of “Lovecats” that sounds even less like the original than the version that the band is playing, if that's even possible, he's had enough.

He turns around to confront the offender, only to come face to face with a guy about his age, a little older maybe. The guy's rail-thin, with cheekbones that make him appear like he's not eaten anything in weeks, and he's dressed like he just stumbled out of a time machine from the sixties. That guy, of course, is none other than Rhys Webb, but at the time being, Joe doesn't know that yet. What he does know, however, is that he's obnoxious, and so Joe snaps his fingers in front of Rhys' face a couple of times until he slips out of his trance and makes an attempt at focusing his eyes on Joe's.

He's completely off his face, Joe is sure now, and he yells, in the hope that it'll get through the music, “listen, mate?”

Rhys tilts his head, ever so slightly, and Joe takes this as a sign to continue. “Look, I get it, you're enjoying yourself over here, but can you, maybe, be a little less enthusiastic about it?” He raises his voice just a little more, to make clear to Rhys that he's making a point, and says, “gonna be honest here, your singing is _shite_.”

Joe doesn't quite make out what Rhys is yelling back at him, but either way, when he turns back toward the stage, the wailing is a lot quieter and less annoying. In fact, he spends the next few songs finally getting properly lost in the music, he starts to dance and mouths along a couple of words whenever he knows them. He only remembers that Rhys is even there when they play a lesser known Cure song, a B-side or something early, Joe doesn't actually know the title, and Rhys shows up in his peripheral vision, dancing and clapping along once more.

He mouths “I love this song,” and Joe doesn't really know what to do, what to say to this drunken stranger, and so he just lies and mouths back, “me too.”

A wide smile spreads across Rhys' face, showing off too many crooked teeth, and he moves a little closer to Joe, almost close enough to be uncomfortable, and again, Joe doesn't know what to do.

So they just dance, for most of the song. Joe is pretty good at dancing, or he likes to think that he is, he's had a lot of girls tell him so at least. Rhys is too drunk to keep any sort of rhythm whatsoever, though, so it's awkward and wooden. Joe is pretty sure that he ends up looking like he's drunk as well just by attempting to make Rhys' dance moves look slightly less awful, and besides, he's not used to dancing with someone who's just as tall as he is. He's almost grateful when the song comes to a close, even if he has to admit that he's enjoying it just the slightest bit, and then, when the last note finishes playing and the cymbals stop vibrating, when the singer takes hold of the mike to say “thanks so much,” that's when Rhys pushes his hands into Joe's shoulders and plants a big one right on his mouth.

Honestly, Joe hasn't really given the whole gay thing much thought prior to that. All he's certain of is that girls are hot and that he wouldn't be opposed to having sex with David Bowie circa early seventies either, if the opportunity ever arose, so he's pretty neutral on the kiss itself, but he doesn't know where the fuck this guy has had his mouth before and isn't especially eager to find out, either. He can taste cigarettes and whiskey, plenty of whiskey, as well as a couple of other flavours he can't really place, and it's all not especially appetizing.

They pull apart after only two or three seconds, and Rhys laughs, drunken and high-pitched and crazy. Joe's first instinct is to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, which he does. He starts, “Wow, mate, I'm sorry, but...”

Rhys cuts him off with another laugh and says, “oh my god.” Through the opening riffs of the next song, he shouts, “oh my god, I'm sorry, so sorry, I really shouldn't have done that, it's just, I'm just so excited and you, you were right there, and...”

The whole speech would be a lot more melodramatic if the words were coming out straight and if Rhys wasn't badly attempting to hold back his laughter the whole time, and if he wasn't shouting it over a really weird cover “Just Like Heaven”, Joe thinks, and he laughs along, they both laugh, and Rhys continues, “god, I just, I want to touch someone so bad right now.”

“Not going to stop you.” Joe shrugs, and then, when he realises what he's just said, he adds, “I mean, there's plenty of people here you could touch, go ahead, I won't stop you. Just, not me.” He laughs, awkwardly.

Rhys laughs back, almost shrieking with it, Joe thinks it's almost endearing in just how ugly it is, and then pats both of Joe's shoulders at once where he'd never taken his hands off. “I like you, you, you know that, you make me laugh.” He pulls his hands away and says, “but I've got places to go, people to snog, drinks to drink.” Again, Rhys laughs and continues, “I've stuff to do, but don't worry, kid, don't worry, I still like you, I like you a lot.” He grabs Joe by the shoulders once again and kisses him again, on the cheek this time, but Joe isn't sure whether that was his intention at all or if he just missed his target by a lot, because it's a bit too slobbery for a regular kiss on the cheek.

He watches Rhys stagger off, thin legs shaking under him and braying voice already wailing along to the song the band's playing again, and only then he wipes Rhys' saliva off his cheek and exhales deeply. A little, Joe feels drained, like just spending those past few minutes with that bloke has taken up all his energy, and instead of going back to just watching the band, he starts pushing his way through to the bar counter and hopes deeply that the barman won't want to see his ID, because right now, he really wishes he had a drink.)

–

(In retrospect, Joe doesn't have a clue on whether Rhys even remembers that night at all, and if he does, whether he ever made the connection, because Joe knows that it took him a while. He never asked, and honestly, sometimes he doesn't even want to know, wants to keep that memory of young, wasted Rhys private like an inside joke with himself, just for the sake of it.)

–

So this one time way later, after they've gone from flatmates to fuck buddies and after they've both graduated from uni, they're on the roof of their apartment building. This is the type of summer morning where the whole city looks bright and washed-out like an overexposed photo, and Rhys watches the crawl of the morning commute on the street far below him and blinks a bit. It hurts, in his brain, and he can't quite tell tell whether that's just the alcohol or whether the sunlight is really that bright. Either way, though, he makes his way to the other side of the roof where Joe is sitting, legs dangling down from the edge of the roof. This is after they'd spent a night out on the town, stumbling in and out of clubs and bars, and now they're here, still drunk, and the excitement of last night is still lingering around them, or at least around Rhys, it shakes in his chest and in his throat the way a hiccup does. His legs are shaking too when he tries to sit down on the edge next to Joe, and he ends up flailing awkwardly to keep his balance.

Joe rings his arms around Rhys' waist and goes, “watch it, watch it,” and at that, Rhys flails a little more and swats at his chest and shoulders uselessly. He protests, “let go of me!”, but he can't keep the laughter from bubbling out of him and making him shake, again, the roof is shaking, everything is shaking, Joe is shaking.

Joe is shaking his head and saying, “nah. Can't have you falling off the roof like that,” and then he leans in and kisses Rhys, first on the high curve of his cheekbone, then slightly lower, getting closer and closer to his mouth with quick little kisses, and those shake too, just a little, in Rhys' eyes and in his chest. Joe reaches his lips, and when Rhys darts his tongue out to taste him, he tastes sloppy saliva and the slightest trace of Jaegermeister in Joe's mouth. They pull apart after a couple of seconds, and then Rhys reaches for the bottle between them, he takes a huge swig of the full on cough syrup-bitter of the liquor and laughs, once again.

For a few minutes then, they sit in silence, one of Joe's hands still firmly wrapped around Rhys' side, and sip from the bottle in turns. Honestly, Rhys likes it like this, the quiet with nothing but the white noise of traffic far below them and the way the inside of his ribcage feels warm and swimming, and that's most certainly just the alcohol talking and not how close he and Joe are right now. He most certainly isn't almost overly aware of all the places where Joe is touching him, fingers under his ribcage, warm body pushing against the side of his arm and the crest of his head against his shoulder, all those soft touches that have nothing to do with fucking, and it's most certainly not contributing to the excitement in his gut and his throat, either.

Joe puts down the bottle and turns toward Rhys, their heads so close together their lips almost brush, and says, “you wanna know what's funny?”

“Yeah?”

“It's funny how people are always saying that from really far up, all the people down on the ground looks like ants.” He laughs and leans forward, as if he wants to get a better look, and continues, “but really, they don't look like ants at all. They just look like...” Joe pauses, then, almost as if he didn't know what to say, but then Rhys notices the massive spit trail that's slowly dangling down from Joe's lips to the crowd below, and then it disconnects and drops down onto the pavement somewhere below them.

Rhys cringes, “fuck, you're disgusting.”

“Tiny people, you know.” Joe grins, toothy and crooked with drunkenness. “You like it.”

He leans forward and closes the gap between them, and kisses Rhys once again. Rhys can still feel traces of spit on Joe's lips and chin before their tongues even meet and tries his hardest not to be disgusted by that, rather unsuccessfully, too, but he leans into the kiss either way. He wipes his mouth after Joe pulls away, and then Joe says, “fuck.”

“Hm?”

“I'm really bored.” He pushes his face into Rhys' shoulder and, after a small pause, says against his skin, “I don't know, I just really wanna go and do something right now. Nothing to do here.”

Rhys shrugs, “Suppose we could go back inside.” He lifts up the bottle from where it stands between them and checks the level of the liquid contained within, finding it to be near empty, and continues, “think we've got another half full bottle of this stuff somewhere, and I've gotta have weed. We could, I don't know, keep drinking and listen to some records, maybe?”

Honestly, he's beginning to feel bored as well, but it's not like there's anywhere to go at this time of the day and he's not near bored enough to sleep already, or ever, he wants to stay awake and drunk and with Joe for as long as possible.

Joe laughs and nuzzles his face against Rhys' skin, and that's enough to send a small shiver down his spine. “Mm, yes. Or, you could just take me to your room and fuck me and keep me entertained like that.”

Rhys laughs, because this is really another thing he had in mind, a thing he's been awaiting for the past couple of hours, the part of the night when Joe decides to invoke that part of their relationship.

“Well, yeah, I was thinking of that, too. Figured I should be at least a little subtle about it, though,” he says, and he takes Joe's face in both hands and strokes along his jaw.

This time when they kiss, it's different, because this time, he is in control and he knows that they're not just fucking around now, it's slow and about as deliberate and fine-tuned as a kiss can be with both of them as drunk as they are.

After, Rhys is the first to stand up, careful this time around to not flail and nearly fall over again, and he extends a hand to Joe and asks, “so. You're coming, or?”

–

The second time they kiss, or, well, the first time according to Rhys, is at the Junk Club. This is the third or fourth time that Joe comes there, and it's already pretty late, and Joe is already pretty drunk as well. This time around, Rhys is far less drunk than he was at their first kiss, though, but that's still pretty drunk. He's standing in the DJ booth, watching the crowd dance over the song he's picked out, when Joe wanders over.

The song playing is one of Rhys' favourites, Joe knows this from numerous conversations they had when he came to the record shop while Rhys was working, and in his head, he's reciting the lyrics while out loud, he only hums. He knows the song a little too well, which may or may not be because he's been listening to it on a daily basis ever since Rhys handed the single to him and told him, “you should listen to this, it's my favourite. Think you'd like it as well.”

Honestly, this is because he looks up to Rhys just the tiniest bit, what's with Rhys being older than him and DJing at a club and having a job at a record shop, and not because he's funny and charming and easy to lead a conversation with, and certainly not because Joe occasionally finds himself thinking a little bit too long about Rhys' long, fine hands, his thin lips and the way his eyelashes flutter shut when he laughs.

Joe watches Rhys watch the dance floor, and he places one tentative hand on Rhys' arm and goes, “hey.”

“Well, hey.” Rhys smiles and shows off his crooked teeth, and it doesn't make Joe involuntarily smile back in how oddly charming it is, most certainly not. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yeah.” Joe sips from his drink and he says, “good selection of music tonight, real good.”

“Thanks.” The smile is back and Joe's heart is not doing a tiny jump. “This is my favourite song ever, you know?”

“Yeah,” Joe says, “yeah, I know.”

Honestly, when he looks back now, Joe doesn't have any memories of what happens in the couple of seconds between when he said that and when he was kissing Rhys. It just kind of happened, somehow, and he doesn't remember which of them initiated it either.

This is his second time kissing a man, and even though it's the same man as the first time, it's different, because for one, this time, Joe actually wants it. He savours the kiss, the way Rhys' lips part under his and how he pushes his thin fingers into the fabric of Joe's shirt, and honestly, if Joe were to compare and contrast, the kissing itself is really not that different from any of the girls he's kissed.

Rhys tastes like mouth, more than anything, with just the faintest hint of cigarettes. Joe likes that, how people's mouths all taste and feel more or less the same, it's this big unifying concept that makes kissing as great as it is, the taste of mouth.

What's different from kissing a girl, though, is the lack of sticky make up against his lips, the rough skin of Rhys' cheek under his hand, with just the slightest bit of stubble, and most obviously, the glaring lack of tits pressing against his chest. He can't really decide if he likes it more or less than kissing girls, because it's completely different and yet so similar, but he's pretty certain that he's enjoying it a whole lot.

When Rhys pulls back after a couple of seconds, he laughs, and with his hands still pressed against Joe's chest and shoulder, he says, “well. That was, that was pretty good, actually.”

Joe can't help but beam a little at that comment, because while he's gotten similar things from the girls he's snogged, none of them were exactly experienced, so it could have been that, and besides, none of them were, well, _Rhys_. “You wanna do it again?”

Rhys shakes his head and gestures toward the record spinning and the needle slowly getting closer to the centre. “Little bit busy over here. Got to keep the music coming.” He smiles and Joe stares at his teeth, wants to taste Rhys' mouth again, but he settles for letting Rhys kiss him on the cheek. “We'll continue later, yeah?”

–

Incidentally, the same night of their first kiss is also the night that they fuck for the first time.

This is at Rhys' flat, because that's become a thing after the first night, that Joe sleeps on Rhys' sofa after a night at Junk, because even if after that disastrous first time Joe learned pretty quickly where his limit is and that he probably shouldn't take drugs complete strangers offer to him, he's still only 17 and living with his parents, and he doesn't particularly want to explain to his mum why he's coming home drunk at ungodly hours from a club that he shouldn't be able to get into in the first place.

So, they're in Rhys' bedroom, and this is at that particular ungodly hour after the Junk Club has closed down for the night, after they'd made it up the stairs, still drunk, arms around each other's shoulders, trying to suppress their laughter over something that Rhys had said in the cab, and after Joe had pressed Rhys against the wall in the hallway and kissed him, and then asked, “so, you want to continue now?”

It's after their hands had started to roam and Rhys had broken the kiss and whispered, “Joe? My bed?” and after their clothes had started to come off one by one. Honestly, Joe doesn't really have a clue on what to do with a male body, as all of his previous sexual encounters had mainly centred around the girl in question, her breasts and arse and cunt and that.

So he's a little lost at first, because Rhys is all long, straight lines and pale skin, flat-chested and curveless below him, and he's sexy in the most awkward way possible when he runs his hands along Joe's back and licks at his neck and collarbone, and it's just a bit too much for him. Luckily, though, Joe knows what to do with a cock, doesn't have to do any awkward fumbling and groping like he would with a girl because he knows what he likes, and judged by the soft little sounds that Rhys makes, it feels just as good for him.

This is a couple of minutes after that, after Rhys had sunk down to his knees onto the carpet and taken Joe into his mouth as deeply as he could manage, the suction and wet heat more overwhelming than how any girl could do it, after he had pulled back and said, almost conversationally, with one hand still stroking at the base of Joe's dick, “god, you should fuck me.”

It's just after Rhys had exploded into a fit of laughter and gone, “no, no, you can't just shove it in, god. It's not, it's not like a cunt, you've got to...”

He awkwardly coats two fingers in lube and pushes them up himself. Honestly, Joe is taken aback a little bit, but that's because of the realisation that he is really doing this, he's about to have sex with a man and more than eager for it at that, certainly not because of the look on Rhys' face as he slowly rocks back against his own hand, a kind of focussed ecstasy Joe had never seen on the faces of any of the girls he'd fingered before. He most certainly doesn't bite his lip in anticipation and watches every small twitch in Rhys' expression and his breath doesn't hitch a little when he asks, “so. So that actually feels good, then?”

Rhys slowly pulls his fingers out of himself and wipes them on the bedspread and says, “yeah. Fuck, yeah, it does.” He gestures toward Joe and continues, voice low and tinged with sex, “come here, come here.”

Joe does, until they're face to face, and he takes in the sight of Rhys below him, his usually so neatly kept hair messy and sticking out at odd angles, his lips bruised and swollen, the thin sheen of sweat glistening on his chest, and the way his legs are spread almost embarrassingly wide, and it's probably the hottest thing Joe has ever seen. Between Rhys' legs, his cock is hard and glistening with precome under what little light is coming through the window, and that's hot, too, in a way, but then, it's almost strange as well, the reminder that he's about to shag someone who has a _cock_ , which still isn't a thing he'd ever thought he would want.

Suddenly, Joe feels sober, far more sober than he should be, and he wipes that thought from his mind and instead leans down to kiss Rhys, feels the grind of their erections against each other and the small groan that leaves Rhys' mouth and enters his more than he hears it.

“Come on, come on,” Rhys whispers when he pulls back and drops his head onto the pillow, and he blindly gropes for the lube and condoms on the bedside table.

He rolls one onto Joe's cock and then runs a lube-covered hand down it, all with a kind of expertise that makes Joe's stomach drop a little bit, makes him wonder just how often Rhys has done this kind of thing before and how high the standards he's got to measure up to are. He swallows, deeply, and sends that thought into the same corner with all the other doubts he may or may not have had about this.

Rhys lies back down, spread out wantonly like a Playboy centrefold, and threads his fingers through the soft hair at the back of Joe's neck, and he says, “don't make me wait.”

Joe shakes his head and replies, “no, no,” and then he pushes the head of his cock just slightly against Rhys' hole, “I won't.”

“Mm, good,” Rhys mumbles and presses a kiss to the side of Joe's neck, the big artery where his heartbeat is already pounding quickly, and then says, “you're not a virgin or anything, though?”

“I've been with girls, no.”

“Good,” Rhys says, once again, and Joe takes that as his cue of some sort, to go ahead.

He's careful when he thrusts in, has to be, because even with the lube slicking him up, there's a resistance of sorts there, it's tighter than a girl's cunt. When he can feel the press of Rhys' cock against his stomach, he stops and then takes a deep breath, because _wow_. Even through the thin barrier of the condom, he can feel the texture of Rhys' insides pushing down on him and it's tighter, hotter, better than anything he's ever had.

The hand on the nape of his neck strokes lower and onto his shoulder blade, Joe registers it barely, it's soft and faraway, and then Rhys' voice is whining, “Joe, come _on_.”

“Yeah, all right,” Joe says and begins to thrust slowly, and _wow, wow, wow._

A little, he wonders how this must feel for Rhys, if getting fucked up the arse could possibly be any more better than doing the fucking, and so he goes back to watching his face while he speeds up his thrusts slightly, but the ecstasy from before isn't there, if anything, there's nothing more than just a bit of discomfort.

“You okay there?” he asks, and the sinking feeling there is just the generic punch to the ego every guy gets when he can't please whoever he's got under him, and it's most certainly not because that whoever just so happens to be Rhys.

Rhys shifts, uncomfortably, and his other hand comes up to Joe's shoulders as well, and he says, “you're not doing it right, you've got to... A little to the left, I think.”

His hands turn rough and demanding as he uses Joe's body for leverage to rearrange himself with an amount of strength that Joe wouldn't have suspected him to have in his skinny arms. Without meaning to, he groans when Rhys' insides contract and push against him as he shifts. When Rhys is finished with positioning himself, Joe begins to thrust once more, but again, the hands push at him, his chest this time.

“No, no, wait,” Rhys goes, “my legs, put my legs up. To your shoulders, put my legs on your shoulders.”

And Joe does, he rings his hands around the backs of Rhys' skinny thighs and pushes them up to his shoulders. This time when he thrusts downwards, it's different, he's forced deeper into Rhys, and he sighs low in his throat, but it still doesn't seem to meet Rhys' standards, because this time, Rhys doesn't just shove at his shoulders. He contorts to pull Joe's cock out of his hole, and it's got to be painful, the way his bones are cracking.

“Look, look,” he says as he sits up on the bed, “just let me do this, I know what I'm doing, yeah?”

And with that, he presses Joe down into the mattress, into the same spot where he'd been laying on his back just moments before, and kneels above him.

“What're you gonna...?” Joe starts and trails off, and he immediately feels stupid for it because it's obvious what Rhys is planning to do, because the next second, his hand is at the base of Joe's cock. Then he's inserting it, slowly sliding his arse down the length, and Joe can't help but groan “fu _uuu_ ck,” at that, at the slow squeeze of Rhys' insides and the look of complete concentration on his face, like he's determined that this will have to be good for both of them.

“This better?” Joe asks, planting his hands on Rhys' hipbones once he's fully seated.

Rhys shrugs and experimentally rocks back and forth, his face contorts into the same ecstatic expression from earlier, and he breathes, almost moans, “yeah, yeah.”

His insides fucking _squeeze_ around Joe's cock and there's no way he didn't do that fully on purpose, the sensation jolts all the way from Joe's groin up his spine and sends shocks through what feels like every single one of his nerve endings. It's good, it's great, it's better than everything, but it's simply not enough, and Joe wants nothing more than to just buck his hips into the tight heat of Rhys' body already.

He asks, “hey, Rhys? Can I move, or...?” and in response to that, Rhys says, “yeah, yeah, go ahead,” voice shaky and soft and sexy, and that sends another chill up Joe's spine.

His upper body drops forward and Joe watches his face in the light coming in from the window, cheeks flushed and sweaty and pupils blown wide, and then he's pressing kisses to Joe's neck and mumbling against his skin, “I'll tell you if you're really bad.”

“Fuck you,” Joe says, but he laughs either way and slowly starts to thrust into Rhys again.

“Yeah,” Rhys gasps out and rolls his hips, and then they're moving together, “that's the idea here.”

–

(After the sex, after Rhys has rolled off Joe and cleaned the traces of come from both their stomachs with a tissue, they just lie there, arms draped across each other lazily. Joe could really go for a fag right now, but he knows enough about Rhys that he wouldn't tolerate smoking in his bed, and besides, he's too lazy to move, either way. There's the hazy bliss of post-sex spreading slowly in his chest, but it's not the way it was the very first time he shagged a girl, there's no feeling of having come of age or achieved some new level of manhood, but there's no internal sexuality crisis of “I just fucked another guy” happening in his brain, either. For the moment, Joe is content with lying there, listening to Rhys making happy little noises that aren't really words, and the feeling of his fingers running circles along his side, and there's a warm daze spreading through his blood that feels a lot like being drunk.)

–

It's worse the next morning. Joe wakes up with a buzzing head and slightly disoriented, because this isn't Rhys' couch, and where did his clothes go, it seems like the alcohol from last night is taking its toll now. He shifts on the mattress and it feels like his brain is rolling up and down the walls inside his head, the mattress which is still warm from Rhys' body.

He can hear Rhys rummaging about in the kitchen, his cacophonous wailing over the crackle of a record, and he can't figure out how Rhys can be that cheerful this early in the morning when he's got to have been just as drunk as Joe last night.

Right, the memories are coming back now, he shagged Rhys last night. Worse, he shagged Rhys and he liked it, a whole lot, it's not like he has a lot of experiences to contrast that one with, but he'd go as far as to say that it was the best sex he had so far, and if what he's remembering isn't just figments of his imagination, then Rhys must have thought it was pretty great as well. He shagged Rhys and he would totally do it again, and really, it's not that Joe has any problem with gay people or the thought of being gay himself, but this is _Rhys_ who he's talking about. Rhys who is older and cooler and more experienced than he is, Rhys who seems to know everyone and who's also probably what he'd consider his best mate, and _shit_ , this is weird as fuck.

He pulls the covers over his head, because the light from outside aches behind his eyes and in his head, a deep, grinding ache, and besides, maybe it will all be better after he gets a couple hours of sleep, maybe he needs to just sleep it off and then maybe the fact that he shagged his best mate will stop freaking him out. Yes, he buries his head in the pillow and ignores the grumbling coming from his stomach, sleep is going to make it all better, and he begins to doze off.

Unluckily for him, though, it's only a couple of minutes before the covers are pulled back and Rhys settles in next to him. His bare legs are icy cold against Joe's, as is the hand that wraps around his side, and it jolts through his skin in an unpleasant way and stings in his brain. Joe groans, without really meaning to, and at that, Rhys laughs softly and presses a kiss to the spot below his ear.

“Mm, morning,” he says, hand tracing soft circles over Joe's ribs, “hungover?”

Again, the only reply Joe can really manage at first is a groan, the kind that grates in his throat and sounds like something that could only come from the depths of hell itself. “Mm, you bet.”

Rhys just laughs once again, and normally, that wouldn't bother him so much, but right now, Joe just wants to keep sleeping, and do that without having a twitchy cold body pressed against him preferably, thank-you-very-much.

“Know that feeling,” Rhys whispers into his neck, lips brushing against the skin there, and tangles one long leg around Joe's thigh, it feels cold, cold, cold and Joe wonders how he can say that, and, again, that in case he really is just as hungover, how he can be that happy and touchy-feely, and it's all way too much.

Joe shifts, slowly pushes himself up and turns to sit cross-legged on the bed, against the headboard and far enough away from Rhys. All these movements rattle in his head like a punch to the skull, but it's slightly better than having to deal with all of it like that without just saying anything, and so, he says that thing. He starts, “listen, Rhys,” and when he then realises that unlike Rhys, who's wearing black briefs and the gaudy paisley shirt from the night before that almost makes him feel even dizzier, he's completely naked, he pauses and drapes the sheets over his lap to cover himself.

He feels a bit silly for it immediately, considering he's about to discuss the fact that the night before, he _shagged_ Rhys, but then on the other hand, that's not the type of topic he really wants to discuss with his dick just out like that. Rhys turns to face him, sitting up as well. Between the nauseating pattern, his shirt is halfway unbuttoned and Joe can still see the marks he'd sucked onto his neck and collarbone, and like that, he's not really sure what to say any more.

He figures he should just bring up the general subject and then roll with whatever comes to mind after that, and so he starts again, “because of last night...” and after that he _still_ doesn't know how to go on, but luckily, or unluckily, perhaps, Rhys cuts him off.

“No, no, let me guess,” he says, and there's a tone in his voice that Joe can't place at all, but he knows already that he doesn't like it. Rhys takes a deep breath, almost sounding exasperated. “It's because you're straight, and you want to pretend that the whole thing last night never happened. Because, look, you were drunk and thought it would be a good idea, but it really wasn't.” He slumps forward a bit and scratches at his own leg, like he doesn't know what else to do, and then mumbles, “not like this sort of thing hasn't happened to me before.”

Honestly, Joe wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn't, because he's pretty sure that doing anything that requires using his eyes is just going to give him an even bigger headache.

This whole thing Rhys is doing, the making assumptions and being melodramatic, it reminds him of his ex, girls in general, and coming from a bloke, a bloke that he shagged up the arse last night at that, it would almost be funny, if he was a bit less hungover, that is.

Joe replies with the first thing that comes to his mind that isn't completely asinine, which is, “well, maybe you should stop letting your friends bum you when they're drunk, then.”

Rhys laughs, short and dry, but it's the kind of laugh that's more spite and less actual humour. “Sounds like it could be a solution, yeah.” He fishes a packet of fags from his shirt pocket and lights one up, and it makes Joe realise just how badly he's craving it as well.

“Give it here,” he goes and extends one arm, and Rhys passes him the cig.

Joe inhales and drops his head back against the wall, carefully, and puffs a big cloud of smoke out of his mouth. It floats up to the ceiling and he follows it with his eyes before they drop shut, and he relaxes, a little. He wants to keep talking, he guesses, get this over with already so everything will stop being awkward and he can go back to sleep. Besides, talking is way easier when you're smoking and you don't have to hold your head up by yourself or even look at the other person.

“No, but really, I had a great time last night,” he says and then hands the fag back to Rhys, “not gonna act like it's never happened, either. I mean, it did.”

It sounds stupid, Joe realises that, and judged by the look on his face, Rhys thinks so as well, but the words just keep coming before he can really think about them. “So we had sex and it was pretty great and all that, but you know, this.” He vaguely gestures with both hands at the bed spread out in front of him, and by association, at Rhys, and then he says, “this is _weird_ , fuck. I was thinking we should just not make it a big deal, just, you know, something that happened, this one time we got drunk and then I bummed you and it's not gonna happen again.”

The words keep coming out and honestly, as Joe hears himself say them, he no longer feels like he's just hungover but more like he's already drunk again as well, and all too aware of his alcohol-induced lack of judgement, because that's the exact opposite of what he wants to happen. Really, he wants to shag Rhys all over again, even with the pounding in his head and the sour taste of morning breath in his mouth and the fact that they're both still sticky with sweat from last night. That's all he wants, just a shag, and then probably one more time the next night that he's coming to Junk, and then again, but he's already made the words and doesn't really know what to say to take them back, so he just closes the whole speech in the most intelligent way he can think of, which is, “so... yeah.”

He looks at Rhys and then he realises that his hands are still caught in the gesture from earlier, so he folds them in his lap. And Rhys laughs, he fucking _explodes_ with it, and maybe Joe would laugh along if he could figure out what's so fucking funny and if the sound of it didn't hurt in his ears and ring all the way through to his brain.

When Rhys has finally gotten himself together, after what seems like way too long, he pretends to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye, a trite, poofish kind of gesture that he probably thinks is funny or something, and then says, “sorry, I couldn't stop myself. You're just _so_ , I don't know.”

Joe actually laughs at that, can't do anything but laugh, because “I don't know” is exactly how he feels at that second.

“Clueless, I guess. Bit naïve.”

“You're only two years older than I am,” Joe says, but he just keeps laughing, they're both trying to repress their laughter really badly now.

“Least I don't have to bum my friends so they'll get me into clubs.”

Rhys dodges it when Joe aims a stray pillow at his head and then flops back onto the mattress and finishes laughing. “No, it's cute, actually. In the least sexual way possible.” He makes a noise like he's trying not to laugh at his own comment, and then adds, “so you're saying you just want to treat this as some one-off thing. Keep on being friends and not bring it up too much?”

Joe shuffles down the bed and lays on his back as well, and a little, he still feels awkward in his nakedness there in front of Rhys, but he doesn't bother with the sheets this time. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Well,” Rhys says, and then looks at the cigarette in his hand which is burned down almost all the way to the butt. “Pass me the ashtray from the bedside, will you?”

Joe does, and Rhys continues, “what you were saying, yeah. I think I can deal with that.”

“Well, good,” Joe says. That's the only thing that comes to his mind, when really, it's not good at all, because he still doesn't want this to be just a one-off thing. He looks over at the clock mounted on the other wall, his train leaves in an hour and it's a long way to the station even if he takes the bus for part of the journey.

“Fuck, I've got to hurry,” he says, more to himself than to Rhys, but when he swings his legs over the edge of the bed, the crunching feeling of his brain rolling against the walls of his skull shows up again, and he sinks back into the mattress with a loud groan.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Rhys stand up and shoot him a look.

“Maybe you should catch the train after that one.”

“Maybe,” Joe agrees and rolls over onto one side. “Maybe I'll go back to sleep first.”

“I think I'm going to make tea.”

–

(Rhys does, and Joe doesn't fall asleep again, instead managing to drag himself out of bed to piss and put his clothes back on and take a paracetamol. Then they sit on the couch and drink tea, and Rhys puts on a record he's been meaning to show Joe and they don't say anything for a while. It's not awkward, though, or at least that's what Joe tells himself, it's only awkward if he says it's awkward, and he's most certainly not carefully watching Rhys and replaying what he remembers from last night while he texts his sister with heavy thumbs, telling her to tell their mum that he'll be back two hours later than when he'd promised he would be. He also most certainly doesn't develop a sudden interest in the living room wallpaper when he finds himself fantasising about shagging Rhys once more, and when Rhys drives him to the station later on, he doesn't spend the whole ride in the car looking down at his shoes and feeling kind of stupid, either.)

–

The second time they shag, it's when Joe is eighteen and Rhys is twenty, and Joe is studying for his A levels. He's over at Rhys' flat, because Rhys had offered to help him with revision, even though Rhys' definition of revising appears to be taking one look at Joe's study guide and muttering in disbelief “fuck are they even teaching kids these days?” before heading over to the liquor cabinet.

Soon enough, they're both drunk and really more talking about nothing than doing any actual studying, and after two hours or so, Joe decides that it's enough, so they move to the living room and lie on the carpet. They play a couple of records, with the volume down so they can keep talking, and Joe stares at the ceiling and most definitely doesn't think back to that one night and wonder whether there's any way they can do it again any time soon.

They haven't really brought it up since that morning after, not because they're specifically avoiding the topic, but because “hey Rhys, remember that one night when we got drunk and ended up fucking” isn't really the kind of subject you discuss in everyday conversation. Joe doesn't really think about it all too much, either, that is to say, unless he's around Rhys and they're both drunk, which is rather often. He absolutely doesn't ever think back to having Rhys spread out and willing under him whenever he's having a wank, though, certainly not.

The needle slips from the record they had playing, and when Rhys gets up to change it, Joe's stupid drunk mouth starts running again.

“Fuck,” he says, “you know what?”

Rhys turns from where he's standing at the turntable, record carefully grasped between thin fingers, and laughs, soft and drunken. “What?”

“I could,” Joe continues, and he absolutely doesn't pause to turn his head and watch Rhys' slender hands work the needle of the record player, “really could do with a shag right now.”

He laughs back, half because Rhys just did and it's infectious, the way it sounds, and half because of what he'd just said, it's funny in how drunken and inane it is. The way he just put it, it sounds like he's just randomly decided, hey, let's ask Rhys if he's up for a shag, as if he doesn't have the sensation of _WANT_ tingling in his veins and at his nerve endings, and as if he wasn't pretty sure he would already be sporting a semi if he wasn't too drunk to get it up that easily.

For a split second, Rhys just looks over at him, and then he starts laughing once more, in that annoying braying manner that's almost endearing. He plops down onto the couch and says, voice still shaky with laughter, “what d'yer want me to do then, hire you a call girl?”

Joe lifts his head to look at Rhys laying back against the upholstery, at his shirt that's rucked up a bit and shows a hint of the thin trail of hair that starts just below his belly button, and at the way he moves his fingers when he lights his cigarette.

He keeps the laughter at Rhys' quip down, though, and instead says, “well, actually I didn't even think that far,” and he reaches for the bottle of Jack Daniels and downs a huge swig before he continues, “was thinking more along the lines of we should shag.”

Joe pauses for a second to watch Rhys' reaction, and he's not one hundred percent sure whether the little drunken smile on his face _is_ his actual reaction or just a remainder of his earlier laughter. “I mean, if you're still doing the whole letting your mates bum you when they're pissed thing, that is.” He sniggers to himself at his own comment.

“You saying that I'm a slag?” Rhys asks, and his voice is shaking like he's trying to hold back the laughs this time around.

“I don't know, I mean, you put out before we ever even went on a date. 's kind of slaggy, if you ask me.”

“Fair enough.” Rhys prods Joe's shin with the tip of his foot and says, “so you're saying you want to shag me again?” It's not a question at all but it sounds like one.

Joe shrugs, “sure, why not,” and laughs again, can't stop himself, because the whole thing is so absurd, that he's having a casual conversation with Rhys about the two of them shagging when he could put that time to better use and _actually_ shag Rhys. “It'd be good, I can tell, I've been reading up on technique and stuff.”

He really had, on the internet, he'd somehow stumbled into an instructional site on “how to please your man” while he was browsing through gay porn, most certainly not on the lookout for any videos where either of the actors involved even slightly resembled Rhys.

“God, I can't believe you sometimes,” Rhys says, laughter still evident in his voice, but he lets himself drop down onto the carpet either way, and then his face is right next to Joe's again, breath hot and smelling of alcohol. “I like that. Not being able to believe you.”

Then they're kissing, and it's unexpected, and kind of awkward because their noses are rubbing against each other, but Rhys' mouth is so warm and soft and wet, and his hand is slowly rubbing over Joe's cheek and his hair so soft under Joe's fingers, and altogether it's like they hadn't seen each other in years, almost, and it's kind of perfect in a way.

Honestly, Joe has had better kisses with girls, he's had better kisses with Rhys as well, but this is nearly a year since that night and to finally have it happen again is just so _satisfying_ , it makes Joe sigh at the back of his throat just a little bit.

They pull apart, and Rhys lets his hand move lower, lets it circle lazily over Joe's hip, so close to his dick but still so far, and then he says, “you'll regret it in the morning, won't you?”

“Not gonna,” Joe says, “won't let myself regret it, we've just got to...” He pauses then to kiss Rhys again, just briefly, and then continues, “set up boundaries, you know. Like, we're mates, you know this, but then we shag, and then when we're done we just go back to being mates, all right? Whatever you'd want to call that.”

“You mean friends with benefits,” Rhys says, “that's the word you're looking for.”

“Yeah. Why not.” Joe laughs. He grabs Rhys by his skinny hips and pulls him on top of him, and then kisses him before he can make the stupid comment that he thinks he's funny that Joe just _knows_ is about to come.

–

(They shag right there on the sofa, and this time, Joe lets Rhys fuck him. He's always figured that it would be awkward to get fucked, awkward and painful, no matter what he's gathered from the internet and from shagging Rhys. Rhys is good at distracting him from the discomfort, though, when he carefully slips a single lubed up finger into Joe and coaxes him open. He keeps Joe from noticing the unpleasant feeling of being stretched for the first time by stroking his cock with the other hand and pressing small kisses to his face and neck, whispering soft syllables which aren't really words, but they're comforting, promising. Then he hits that one spot inside of Joe that sends shivers down his spine and that makes the pain fade away at least for the moment.

Honestly, Joe has to try his hardest to bite back a surprised scream, because he definitely hadn't expected for it to feel like _that_ , but now he can definitely see what Rhys had meant with it feeling good and just why it had sent him into complete ecstasy. After his breath has caught, he gasps out, “holy shit,” and Rhys laughs at his face as if he'd said something incredibly stupid and obvious right then.

“Do that again?”

When they actually fuck, Rhys is gentle at first, softly rocking his hips to see if Joe can take it. He strokes his cock with the same slow rhythm, and when Joe pulls him close by the back of his neck and whispers, “come on, hurry, I'm not going to break,” he speeds up to a harder pace, snaps his skinny pelvis back and forth faster than Joe thought he'd be able to. It's not too much, though, it could never be too much, and Joe grinds his arse back against Rhys to meet his thrusts and can't do too much other than gasp out wordless whines. It doesn't take too long until they both come, accompanied by little feverish moans that are less coherent sentences and more varied strings of “fuck”, “god”, and each other's names. Joe feels like he might pass out, the image of Rhys sweaty and dishevelled between his spread legs ever so slightly fading at the edges, and he's pretty sure that's not just the alcohol talking.)

(Afterwards, after Rhys had pulled his now soft cock from Joe and unceremoniously dropped the condom in the ashtray on the coffee table, they both just lie there on opposite ends of the sofa, breaths still coming out heavy.

Joe stretches to reach for his trousers, on the floor just a few inches away, and pulls his packet of cigarettes from one pocket. He lights one and says, “well, I guess we're officially fuck buddies now.”

“Friends with benefits. I like that word more,” Rhys replies, voice hoarse, and kicks at whatever part of Joe is closest to him, which happens to be his knee, “pass me a fag, will you?”

Joe aims the whole packet into the dark at what he assumes must be Rhys' end of the couch, and says, “friends with benefits, fuck buddies, don't care. That's what we are.” He takes a deep drag and exhales, and then continues, “so. What do we do now?”

“You're getting off my sofa and into my bed so I can sleep here, I'd suggest.”

“Nah.” Joe yawns and pushes his face into the upholstery, still sticky with sweat. “Too fucked out to move.”

“I just bummed you, I'm not gonna let you sleep on this awful couch while I get the bed.” Rhys laughs, dryly. “That's terrible etiquette.”

“Still not moving.” Joe stubs the butt of his fag out on what he assumes is the edge of the coffee table and curls himself tighter on his side of the sofa. Even though the flat is cold and the sweat on his skin is beginning to cool, the warm haze in his veins that's one part what's left of his drunkenness and one part post-sex afterglow keeps him from freezing. There's a dull ache shooting through his body though, in his legs from keeping them wrapped around Rhys' waist, and in his arse.

“You know, if I walk funny tomorrow and my mum asks I'm gonna tell her you drugged me and took advantage.”

Rhys laughs, sounding more asleep than awake. “Fuck you,” he says, and Joe tells himself that it most certainly doesn't sound any more affectionate than it usually does whenever Rhys insults him.)

–

(It happens again and again after that, after nights out at Junk or cheap gigs, or just whenever they're both drunk or particularly bored. Joe gets his A level results a couple months later and somehow he's managed to actually pass all of them. To celebrate, they get drunk again and then Rhys sucks Joe off in the kitchen while his back is pressed against the refrigerator door. It's slobbery and sloppy but also perfect and Joe doesn't mind returning the favour after. He moves into the spare room in Rhys' flat pretty soon after that night, after he's been accepted into uni, and then he gets a job selling freshly squeezed juice at this little kiosk.)

–

This is sometime in the morning and they're in the kitchen, once again. It's the nasty kind of morning, the rain splutters against the window pane and turns the world all blurry, but when Joe looks, he can just make out the soggy leaves covering the pavement and the way the wind is rustling at trees and umbrellas alike. This is a Friday morning when Joe is nineteen and Rhys is twenty-one. Neither of them have any classes until later that day, the record shop is closed Fridays, and Joe has the day off from his juice job.

It's a shame, really, he thinks, because on a grey day like this, he could easily make do with the gaudy citrus-coloured interior of the kiosk, and maybe a glass of pulpy orange juice as well, anything to make the weather seem less horrible, even just for a while. Unfortunately, though, the only thing they've got in the fridge right now is two cans of beer and a half empty bottle of sweet and sour sauce, because neither of them could've been bothered to go down to the shops for the past few days or so. Rhys is eating crisps for breakfast, dressed in nothing but black briefs and an overly large fuzzy jumper, and sketching down designs for his homework assignment that's due today at the same time, his fingers smearing grease and spicy flavourings all over the page.

The kitchen is quiet save for the occasional chewing noise, and Joe absolutely doesn't watch Rhys eat as he pours two cups of tea from the electric kettle, the way his bare legs rub against each other like he can't sit still and how his brow furrows in concentration. He goes to join Rhys at the table and pushes one cup over to him, and says, “remind me to buy food after class today.”

Rhys greedily takes a large gulp, even though the tea is still visibly steaming, and then says, “mm. Buy food after class today.”

They drink in silence, then, and after a while, Rhys drops his pencil and says, “you ever think this is kind of weird?”

It's completely out of the blue and so Joe's first reaction is a surprised, “what?”

“You know,” Rhys gestures kind of uselessly between the both of them, “this. Us.”

This is during the time period when Joe has just broken up with his girlfriend some weeks earlier and Rhys has been seeing the same guy for the past few months.

That guy's of the posh type, art student with loaded parents who's gone to a prestigious boarding school. He's taller than Joe, a pretentious wanker, but in that charismatic way that makes people want to meet him. His hair is fuller and darker, his jawline more defined, and he's better dressed. He has a bigger vinyl collection and buys his clothes in high end vintage shops and reads leather-bound books in his free time. Sometimes when he comes over he takes photos of Rhys with his pretentious instant camera and then sometimes Joe finds them where they're scattered all over the flat, photos of Rhys eating or sleeping with sex-tousled hair or laughing at that guy's jokes, which definitely doesn't sting just a little. His day job makes more money and if Rhys' noises through the bedroom wall and the bite marks all over his skin are anything to go by, that and his complaints of being unable to sit the morning after when that guy has left, he's better in bed than Joe as well.

And no, Joe certainly doesn't define that guy just by those terms, even if he forgets his name every couple of days and has to be reminded when Rhys has him over.

(On the other hand, Rhys most definitely doesn't spend any extended thinking time drawing parallels and contrasting differences between Joe and that guy, either.)

Joe ponders on the question for a second and then says, “not really, no.” He picks up the empty cups and carries them over to the sink to wash up, and then continues and almost has to shout over the stream of water, “I mean, lots of people do it like this. Just easier, isn't it.”

He can see Rhys shrugging from the corner of his eye. “Just because lots of people do it doesn't make it not weird.”

Honestly, Joe would be a bit more invested in this conversation if he didn't currently have three fingers stuck inside a cup trying to scrub tea residue from its walls with Fairy Liquid. He only replies after he puts the cup down and turns around to face Rhys, leaning against the counter, “so you're saying you want to stop, then?”

“Not really, no.” Rhys drops one hand to scratch at his bare thigh and then picks up his pencil once again and lowers his head. “Just figured I should mention it. I mean, it's still pretty weird.”

Joe shrugs, even though Rhys can't see it the way he's crouched over his sketches, and pulls out his phone to check his messages for the first time in days, mainly to kill time because he doesn't really know what else to do. There's a couple from his mum and sister and another few from people from uni, the kids he occasionally hangs out with or joins at the pub, but he doesn't bother with replying to any of them. Then there's one message from the girl Joe's been seeing at the juice shop lately, the one with the red hair and the pretty brown eyes. He smiles and types out his reply, and with that, he remembers that he's been meaning to ask Rhys something.

“Hey, Rhys?”

“Hm?”

“Tomorrow night, think I can have the flat to myself?”

Rhys still isn't looking up from his sketch, but he nods. “Not a problem.” He reaches for the bag of crisps again and then continues, muffled by his chewing, “been meaning to go out anyway, Faris got us tickets for this gallery opening.”

Faris, right, that's what the art student boyfriend's name is. The right name to suit a snobby twat who fashions himself an eccentric mad artist. Joe is most definitely trying not to sneer at the utter pretentiousness of the concept of him taking Rhys out to a gallery, of all places, while he turns to dig into the pantry for any food that might be in there that isn't crisps.

“Actually, I was kind of hoping I could have it until Sunday morning, maybe? Or afternoon?”

Rhys laughs. “What, are you trying to kick me out of my own flat?” He pauses to pick at a loose thread on his jumper, Joe can see from the corner of his eye, and then continues, “no, no, it's all right. I can kip at his place, don't think he's gonna mind.”

Joe turns, his search having retrieved nothing other than teabags and dusty cups of pot noodle, and goes to sit down at the table once again. He takes a handful of crisps from the bag and remarks, “should hope that he doesn't mind.”

Rhys slaps at his hand and goes, “stop that,” in mock offence, and then he says, “yeah, well. You know how he is, he's an artist.”

Joe doesn't say anything to that, can't think of a comment that isn't in any way sarcastic, and Rhys tilts his head at the design he's just finished, and then says, “this shirt. Do you think it looks too poofy?” He taps the rubber at the back of his pencil onto the page, as if to underline what shirt he's talking about.

“I couldn't possibly comment,” Joe says and shrugs, because it's true, he's never really been able to get behind the fashion thing, or why anyone would want to get a degree in it, and also, because he thinks everything related to it is kind of poofish by default. He adds that, “the whole fashion thing's a bit gay in itself, isn't it?”

Rhys does this thing where he tries not to laugh but just ends up spluttering chewed up crisps and spit all over the back of his hand, and then he says, deadpan, “coming from the guy who woke me up last week by waving his morning wood in my face and asking if we can fuck in the shower.”

“That's different. I mean, there's gay as in sucking cock gay and then there's fashion degree gay.”

“Fuck off.” Rhys wipes his hand on the fabric of his pants and then continues, “fair point though. No, really, I've been told my designs are a bit flamboyant. Don't want people to know they're from a gay bloke just by looking.”

Joe can't help but laugh at that, because this is coming from _Rhys_ of all people, and says, “thought people assumed all blokes who study fashion are gay.”

“Gay or trying to get girls.”

“People do that?”

“Guess so.” Rhys shrugs.

“And that actually works?”

“Not really, no.” Rhys twists a lock of hair from his fringe between his fingers the way he does when he gets the feeling that a conversation isn't really going into the right direction and closes his sketchbook. “So. Why d'you want to have the flat by yourself then, anyway?”

Joe reaches for the bag of crisps between them once again, they honestly taste disgusting but he can't remember the last time he had a proper meal, and so, he just keeps eating them and he says, “nothing big, invited this girl I met at work back to mine. Figured I'd cook her dinner and watch a DVD, something simple like that.” With his mouth still full of crisps, he adds, mainly because he feels like he should say something else but doesn't know what, “yeah.”

Rhys grabs the crisps back from him and sneers. “So that's why you've got to buy food today, then.” He sticks one hand into the bag, but finds it to be empty, and so instead proceeds to lick the grease and small crumbs from his fingers, which is absolutely not fascinating in the slightest. “Assuming by something simple like that, you mean dinner, movie and then sex?”

Joe nods. “Suppose that's the main gist.” He can't keep himself from making the obligatory quip, “not jealous, are you?”

Rhys gives him the side-eye and remarks, “I just feel sorry for the poor girl. Least I don't have to eat what you cook before we have sex.”

He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them, and then reaches for his packet of cigarettes on the table and lights himself one. Like this, Joe thinks, he looks smaller than he is, all curled up and frail, and it almost makes him feel uncomfortable. He holds out one hand for Rhys to pass the fag over to him and takes a deep drag, he can't remember the last time he smoked, either, but it's been entirely too long since then.

Rhys continues, “don't see why it's so important to you that I'm not there. Not that I'm especially eager to meet her, but you've had girls round before while I was here.” He takes the cigarette back from Joe's hand and continues, “you're here all the time when I have Faris over.”

“I don't know,” Joe says, because he doesn't want the room to go silent and to buy himself a few split seconds more time to figure out how to put this. “I think it'd be weird, especially after what happened with Nicky.”

Rhys laughs, short and dry, and gives him that look again. “You know you don't have to tell every girl you attempt to woo that we're friends with benefits, right.” He stares into the glowing cherry of his fag like it's going to give him the answer to a question he didn't ask, and he looks insulted, almost hurt.

Joe tells himself that it's definitely because he has to give up his flat for a night just so he can have his date in peace, and not for any other reasons.

“Still thinks it's kind of weird.” He remembers their conversation from earlier and adds, “to have a girl you want to get with around your fuck buddy, I mean.”

The room goes silent then, and Joe doesn't mind, because he doesn't have anything else to say on the matter, and Rhys not actually disagreeing is pretty much the same thing as him agreeing, so.

After a couple of seconds, Rhys puts the fag down and disentangles his limbs, and says, “I think I'm going back to bed. Barely slept last night.”

He gets up and leaves the room, and then Joe is left there on his own. He watches the butt of the cigarette still simmer in the ashtray where Rhys hadn't put it out properly, and he isn't sure how he should feel. Confused, maybe, and a bit angry because Rhys is making this more complicated than it should be, but then, he can't exactly stay mad at Rhys. He checks his phone again, no reply from his girl yet, and then he reaches for Rhys' fags and lights himself another one.

–

(The night after, Rhys lets Joe have the flat for himself as promised, and he certainly didn't spend the two hours between when he got up from the table and when he had to leave for class lying in bed, unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep because he really was tired, and being uncharacteristically mopy. When Joe tells him a couple of days after that he's officially going out with the girl now, he's happy, because Joe is happy with her, and he himself is happy with Faris, too, and besides, he still gets to fuck Joe every few weeks.

He breaks it off with Faris over a cup of coffee after they'd been going out for over a year and a half. It's mutual, because Faris needs to focus on his art, and because Rhys is this close to getting his degree and a relationship is the last thing he needs while he's trying to figure out what to do with his life, but it's also the heavy-hitting kind of breakup that leaves Rhys feeling lonely and empty for the rest of the day.

He tells Faris they can still be friends, but after that, they barely see each other, and most of their conversation is done via text messaging. Rhys doesn't mind that, really, and when Joe shrugs and asks him what he was thinking when he decided to start dating an art student, of all people, his only response is, “you know, I can't even figure that one myself.”

A couple days after Rhys' conversation with Faris at the café, the girl leaves Joe. This breakup is less amiable, she makes a scene that leaves Joe's room in an awful mess and culminates in her chucking a rare single at his head.

When Rhys asks why, after they've both already downed a copious amount of whiskey, Joe doesn't say anything but, “look, I didn't tell her anything this time. She said she was getting suspicious and then it kind of escalated from there.”

Rhys sighs and nods and holds his hand and when Joe starts crying again, just a little, he lets him. He doesn't like seeing Joe like this, puffy eyes and nose rubbed red, but he's not sad, either. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that less than a week ago, he was in a similar position, curled against the headboard sniffing into a tissue while Joe rubbed his back and told him to let it all out, he would go as far as saying that Joe is overreacting just the slightest bit. Rhys doesn't say anything, though, just lets him cry, and after, when he has wiped the last traces of snot and tears from his face, he kisses Joe, soft and careful and drunken, and asks, “all right?”

They have sex both of those nights, the first night in Rhys' bed, the second on the carpet in Joe's room which ends up giving Rhys rug burn all over his back. It's different from the way they usually fuck, lazy and gentle and sloppy, placing messy kisses all over each other and stroking patterns onto whatever stretch of skin they can reach. They don't speak during it, there's no snide remarks about the other's technique, or lack thereof, no unrelated comments, not even any “yes” or “fuck” or “harder”, it's all just soft wordless moans muffled by lips pressed onto skin. Rhys cries again during the first time, it's definitely because he just broke up with Faris, already misses the sex with him, yes, and Joe just pulls him closer and licks the salty tears from his cheeks.

After, they both just lie there, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders so tightly that their fingers dig into the flesh but chests not touching. Like this, it's a grey area, Rhys thinks to himself, in a way, because the whole fuck buddy thing ends right when they come, and then it's over with no cuddling or kissing afterwards. This, this is nice though, feeling Joe sticky with sweat and breathing regularly next to him. He's out like a light, Rhys has noticed that, always falls asleep right after sex. Normally, he likes watching Joe's face, the way he catches his bottom lip between his teeth and how his brow twitches every once in a while, but this time, he just stares up into the ceiling.

There's dim light coming in from the hallway where neither of them had bothered to flick the switch, and the way it barely outlines the pieces of furniture it makes Rhys think of halos. That's maybe one of those things that should make him wonder why he ever chose to date an art student, but it suits how he feels, saintly, like having this was a spiritual experience.

He then thinks back to being thirteen and having his mother explain to him how sex is a deep emotional connection between two people, and yes, that's what it feels like as well, deep. More intense than any other sex he's had yet, maybe, and that makes him think of the phrase, “making love”, how it's supposedly a special, hard to reach level of sex, and wonders if this is what people want it to feel like.

Rhys looks over at Joe, his tousled hair and his skin still shimmering with tiny beads of sweat, and pushes a lock from his fringe back into place. He pulls his arm away, careful not to wake Joe, and moves to the other side of the bed. He pulls the duvet up to his chin and right then, he tells himself, insists to himself, that he isn't the slightest bit in love with Joe and never will be. The morning after when everything is back to normal, over breakfast and fags, he believes it.)

–

(Joe gets his first real girlfriend a couple of weeks after he starts uni. They've got two classes together and for their first date, he takes her to eat lunch with him. Her name is Nicole, Nicky for short. She bleaches her hair peroxide blonde and likes 80s post punk and activism. Honestly, Rhys likes her, she's funny and doesn't seem to be completely vapid. He can tell what Joe sees in her, and no, he absolutely doesn't wish that he didn't, and he's not the slightest bit jealous whenever Joe spends the night at her flat, either, which is pretty often, since it's closer to campus. He's a bit lonely at times, really, and that certainly hasn't got anything to do with Joe, but it's strange to have the flat so silent, without the sound of someone else's steps, their phone calls, the TV programmes they watch or the ruckus of noise they're causing when they're trying to cook. Rhys listens to records and tries to focus on his coursework whenever Joe is gone, but the flat is still too empty. Then he meets Faris while he's trawling vintage shops in Camden, and that makes it at least a little better.

They still shag, of course they do, Rhys doesn't think that it's a thing they can just stop now that they've started it, because it would just be _weird_ , wouldn't it, to live with someone you used to fuck, and besides, the sex is just too good to stop. Every week or two, after a Junk Club night or just when they're both drunk for no reason, or high, they invariably end up fucking, in whoever's bed is closer, on the sofa or on the kitchen floor. Sometimes when they're not intoxicated at all, just bored and horny. They shag and then when it's over everything is back to normal, Joe has Nicky and Rhys has Faris and they're back to being flatmates, that's all.

They don't talk about the sex and what it means, never did, but the first time they fuck after Joe starts going out with Nicky, he tells Rhys, between small kisses placed on his neck and while his fingers work at the buttons of Rhys' shirt, “this isn't cheating, all right? I shagged you first, before I shagged her, so it's okay.”

Rhys' only reply is to nod and gasp when Joe brushes his lips against a good spot, he doesn't know what to say, doesn't feel like he has to, because it really is, okay, that is.

When he and Faris become a thing a few months later on, he doesn't even bother with bringing up the issue.)

–

Joe and Nicky last seven months. Rhys comes home from his afternoon class one day to find the light in the hall turned on and the faint sound of music. He thinks this is a little strange, because Joe is doing a double shift that day and shouldn't be home until seven or so.

“Joe? You there?”, Rhys calls out into the flat.

Instead of a proper answer, he gets a muffled groaning sound that could be vaguely interpreted as a yes and takes that as a cue to step into Joe's room.

“Shouldn't you be at work? The juice isn't gonna sell itself, you know.”

He immediately regrets the quip as soon as he actually looks around. Joe is curled into the duvet with eyes red from crying and a half empty pot noodle in his hand, and it's probably the most miserable thing Rhys has ever seen.

The first thing on his mind is, “oh.” When he realises that “oh” is probably not the most eloquent or sensible thing to say in a situation like this, he adds, “oh, I'm sorry.”

Then he realises that he still doesn't have a clue what has happened, and so he sits down on the edge of the bed and asks, “you mind telling me what's wrong?”

Joe wipes his nose on his sleeve and then sits up a little. “Nicky and I broke up last night.” He crosses his arms and says, “I called in sick to work. Didn't know what else to do.”

Rhys nods and makes a little sound of understanding. He wants to take Joe's hand, link their fingers and squeeze it gently, as a sign that he won't be going away any time soon, but he's not sure if that's okay with Joe, so he doesn't. “Which one of you,” he starts, he's not sure how to put this, can't think of a more subtle way to ask _why_.

“I did. Kind of.” Joe turns his head downward a little, as if he's embarrassed, and takes a long breath.

It makes Rhys' gut twist a little bit, he's never seen Joe actually ashamed of anything.

“Look, so I took her out to this party a guy from sociology was having, right.”

Rhys just nods, again, even though Joe probably can't see him with his head lowered, and so he reaches out to stroke his arm. The party, yes, Joe had asked him to come along, said that the music wouldn't be too bad from what he'd heard, but Rhys would have felt a little weird getting drunk with kids who were two, three years younger than him, and so he'd said no.

“And it was getting pretty late, and we were both drunk, and then we started fighting over some stupid thing. You know how Nicky gets when she's drunk.” Joe pauses for a second to reach for his fags, and says, “so it kind of gets a little heated and then I do the stupidest thing and slip up and tell her that we're fucking.”

Rhys freezes a little, because that's the last thing he'd expected. Yes, he knows that when Joe gets drunk, he sometimes says things he doesn't mean to say, it's a thing he discovered pretty soon after he met Joe. There's still a strange sinking feeling in his stomach, though, like the dawning realisation that something has gone horribly wrong, but Rhys pushes it away. Then he says, “and then she breaks up with you?”

“No, that's the worst part of it. She does the stupid cliché thing that girls do and says that it's you or her, and then.”

Joe shrugs his shoulders and offers Rhys his lit cigarette. Rhys accepts.

“Well. I said you.” Joe laughs, actually laughs, and it's kind of unnerving, really. “And right after, I was trying to correct myself, I tried to tell her I didn't mean it, I've no clue why I even said that.” He shakes his head and Rhys strokes his thumb over his arm again, just to show that he's still listening, maybe. “So of course she tells me it's over and when I try to call her this morning and talk about it she doesn't pick up.”

Joe looks up and nods, slightly, and Rhys nods back. “So I called work and went back to sleep and then I woke up and had lunch and cried for a while over how fucking stupid I am.” He shrugs and finishes, “but yeah. I guess I'm okay now.”

Joe picks his pot noodle up again from where he'd put it onto the bedside table and turns his head just a little bit, like he's waiting for Rhys to say something. Rhys doesn't. He doesn't say a fucking thing because there's feelings twisting around in his ribcage, heavy and tickling at his insides, they're in his gut and his lungs and rising up his throat like sour bile and he's, in turn, not sure how to feel about these feelings, either.

Again, yes, he knows that Joe's mouth sometimes starts talking without his permission when he's really drunk, but still, there remains the fact that he picked Rhys, his flatmate-fuck buddy over his girlfriend, of all people, and that's the thing that coils in his stomach, the fact that Joe may or may not have some deeply repressed feelings for him. The whole thing about alcohol loosening the tongue and all of that.

No, Rhys most definitely doesn't _want_ Joe to have feelings beyond “a good shag” for him.

After a couple of seconds of trying to suppress the itching at his insides, he says, “sure you're all right?”

Joe nods. “Yeah. Bit heartbroken, I suppose.” He taps his fork against the inside of the cup and adds, “but that's going to pass, eventually.”

Rhys smiles at him, even with his guts still tight and painful. He's honestly not happy that Nicky and Joe broke up, because out of all the girls he could have possibly picked, Nicky was possibly the best option. With all those feelings sloshing around inside of him, though, Rhys can't say that he's really sad, either, though, really, at the moment he's just confused more than anything.

Maybe he'll be less confused once he's pissed, though, he thinks, and so he says, “I have an excellent remedy for heartbreak.”

“What's that?”

“It's called booze. Lots and lots of booze.”

So they drink, that night, and Rhys thinks that it might be inappropriate to make any sort of move on Joe, on account of just why Nicky called it off, but somehow, after a few hours, he ends up on his knees with Joe's cock in his mouth and his hands in his hair either way.

They don't talk about any of what Joe had told Rhys the morning after, or ever.

For the record, Rhys definitely never thinks back to that night and wonders just how much of what Joe's drunk mouth had said was true, whether he'd really pick Rhys over a girl, and he definitely doesn't ever think about how he would choose Joe over Faris any day, either.

After Nicky comes the girl from the juice shop. Rhys can barely remember her name most of the time, and when she's round their flat, he's usually always busy. With coursework or with organising his record collection, or he has to work an extra shift or Faris wants him to come over. Rhys isn't avoiding the girl, really. He's definitely not scared of liking her the way he liked Nicky, that he laughed at her jokes and spent hours talking to her about the early Jesus and Mary Chain tracks, and how he thought that Nicky and Joe seemed _right_ together. And he's certainly not avoiding her because liking her in any way, shape or form would just make the irrational jealousy that much more conflicting and unbearable.

Really, yes, Rhys knows that it's silly, because he doesn't even know how he feels about Joe exactly. They're friends with benefits, yes, so that's friendship combined with sexual attraction, but beyond that, it's all still the itching, twisting mess in his guts that hasn't really gone away since the night of the breakup. It's confusing, especially since he has Faris right there, and it's the kind of confused that Rhys hasn't felt since he was in year eight and trying to figure out why he'd rather see Graham Coxon naked than Debbie Harry, and so, he tries his hardest to ignore it. It doesn't work too well.

–

“Can you stand up straight, maybe?”

“I'm standing straight.”

Rhys sighs and rests the camera on the bedside table. He walks across the room, where Joe is stood against the white wall. His hands push at Joe's stomach, at his shoulder blades, they tug at his arms and push his chin up and it hurts and cracks right in Joe's bones. “You have terrible posture, you know that?”

Joe shrugs and then the hands are on his shoulders again.

“Will you just stop moving when I'm trying to fix you up, please.”

The way it comes out, Rhys sounds exasperated, fed up, and Joe would probably find it funny, how overly dramatic he's being, if he wasn't also feeling completely uncomfortable.

This is when Rhys is twenty-two and in his last year of uni, and Joe is twenty and currently wearing a paisley silk monstrosity of a shirt, courtesy of Rhys' sewing machine that he bought for his textiles class at a flea market years earlier. It's precisely the type of shirt that Rhys wears all the time and that no other self-respecting male would ever even look at twice, Joe thinks, and he also thinks that since he put it on approximately five minutes earlier, he's probably gotten around twenty-five percent gayer. Then again, Rhys had promised him a blow job if Joe just stands still and lets him take the photos he needs, so maybe that's not the most appropriate conclusion to draw.

Rhys tilts his head to one side and eyes Joe up and down sceptically, and says, “you slouch way too much, I don't think you even notice. Put your shoulders back a little more, yes?

“My shoulders _are_ back,” Joe says, “maybe you should use a mannequin if you want something with better posture.”

“Mannequins don't have the right proportions. You can't tell what it's going to look like on the customer.”

This is also after Rhys has started an online business on the side selling custom shirts and records from his collection, a thing which Joe still doesn't really understand, but then, at least it gets them some extra money.

The hands are back at his shoulders again, pushing his bones and muscles into place, and then Rhys says, “guess this is going to have to do.”

He walks back to where he was just standing and picks the camera up again.

“If your posture's so much better than mine why don't you just do this yourself,” Joe just says, and it isn't a question.

He's got the unsettling feeling that the trousers he's wearing today are a bit too tight, and he doesn't particularly want everyone who might have an interest in buying paisley shirts online to see the outline of his dick.

Rhys says, “just stand still for a second already, will you.”

The camera clicks and the flash goes off, and then Rhys says, from somewhere behind the dull echo of the bright light floating in Joe's vision, “lovely. Now, turn so you're facing the wall over there.”

–

(This happens over and over again, and it's always the same deal, Rhys asks Joe to model something for him and has to convince him to do it with the prospect of sexual favours because he's really not into the general idea, and then they spend an extended amount of time bickering while Rhys is trying to take photos. Really, Joe doesn't mind it all too much, likes it even, to argue over things that don't matter at all, and to make Rhys happy, which he is when the pictures come out good. Also, there's the whole free blow jobs thing, although it doesn't take that much for Rhys to suck Joe off as it is.

One night, after a party when they're both really out of it, they're fucking, when Joe suddenly goes, “wait a second, wait, wait.”

He pulls out and gets off the bed, and then Rhys is left feeling needy and empty. He watches as Joe goes through the shelf on the other side of his room, obviously searching for something, but Rhys can't figure just what it could possibly be, and so he asks, “what are you doing?”

“Just give me a second, all right?”

Joe's long fingers reach for books, clothing scattered around, for everything that gets in their way, and Rhys wants them back on his skin, wants to feel them gripping at his thighs or his arms again.

He runs one of his own hands down his side and says, “Joe, come on, get back here and keep fucking me.”

The sheets stick to his skin as he shifts a little, and he can't believe how warm the room is, how much warmer it would be if Joe was on top of him again, and above it all, just how hard he is, almost aching with it and getting no gratification whatsoever. He trails that hand down and grasps his cock, but it's really not the same, it just makes the ache worse and besides, touching himself really is the last thing he'd wanted to do tonight, and so he stops.

“Come on, _please_.”

From the other end of the room comes a small cry of triumph, and then Joe approaches the bed once again. “All right, all right...”

Grasped between his hands is Rhys' camera.

“I swear to god, if you break that thing.” Rhys starts, and then stops, because he isn't quite sure himself, and besides, he really doesn't want to argue over this, right now, he just needs to be fucked.

“I'm not gonna,” Joe says from behind the camera, and then the flash goes off, there's stars in Rhys' eyes, “how would I even break it?”

“I don't know what you've got planned to do with it.” Rhys stretches out one arm toward Joe, but he's too far away to reach. Rhys needs it, desperately needs it, he feels like he's going to die of the ache if Joe doesn't start touching him again soon. “Just, come on, fuck me already.”

Joe grins, and it's almost sinister, or as close as Joe can get to sinister anyway, and then he's kneeling on the mattress again, camera still in hand. His other hand is on his cock, slowly pushing into Rhys again, and Rhys _wails_ , actually wails like a wounded animal and doesn't even feel embarrassed for it, because it's just that satisfying, the sweaty slide of skin on skin and the feeling of being filled. He brings his legs up to wrap around Joe's waist and pull him in deeper, and then he exhales, loudly, and runs a hand down the part of Joe that's closest to him.

“Please,” he whines, for the second time already, and _flash_ , “why are you doing this?”

That strange grin is on Joe's face again, and he probably thinks it's sexy, and his free hand moves from Rhys' cock to his hipbone, up his side and it thumbs at his nipple, runs along his collarbone, all those agonizingly soft touches that just aren't enough. Rhys whines and gasps a little bit, and then the hand is on his cheek, fingers softly stroking the bone there as well.

Joe says, “it's because you're beautiful,” and it's probably his stupid drunk mouth running by itself again, “so beautiful like this, like a girl.”

His fingers push at Rhys' lips and he sucks them into his mouth, tastes the sweat on them and runs his tongue along where the pads are rough. Something about it only makes the want worse, makes Rhys wish that Joe would just start thrusting again already, and then Joe laughs at him, and _flash_.)

(When they both wake up in Rhys' bed the next day, heads buzzing with hangovers, neither of them remember it. It's not until Rhys is going through the pictures he took of Joe on his computer that he finds them in there, three photos of him taken at different angles, spread out naked and sweaty with his hair fanned out all over the pillow and a look of pure desperation plastered onto his face. The whole nudity thing isn't what shocks him about the pictures, though, he's done that before, let Faris take Polaroids of him while they fucked. It's art, he figured, and it's not like anyone would have been able to tell that it's him in the pictures anyway, his bruised lips and bite marks and sweaty skin.

With the photos Joe took, though, they don't have the same kind of artistic merit, it's literally just Rhys, with the flash illuminating every imperfection and freckle on his face, and his pupils blown and red, which is only partly because of the drugs. They're amateur photos, or frankly speaking, shitty photos, but what gets Rhys about them is the look on his face, the way he's staring at the camera and smiling around Joe's fingers shoved in his mouth.

Rhys saves all three of the pictures to a secret folder, but he never looks at them. Really.)

–

The summer after Rhys tells Faris that they're both better off without each other and after the other girl shows up at their flat while Joe is at one of his morning classes and rifles through his room for every gift and piece of clothing she'd ever left there, all without looking Rhys in the face, everything kind of comes to a halt.

This is after Rhys has officially gotten his fashion degree, a thing that Joe makes fun of him for about the next three weeks, because according to him it's just about the gayest thing you can get a degree in short of sucking cock or something like that, and now he doesn't really know what to do. He's planning on quitting the record shop job, because as much as he loves the place, it's a fledgling business and he barely makes enough money for his half of the rent and the bare necessities, but other than that, he doesn't really have a plan.

Get a job at a chain music retailer maybe, or at one of those high end thrift shops, that's somewhat close to something he can use his degree for. Really, he's got the feeling that Joe has the right idea, not about the gay thing, but it's a rather useless thing to get a degree in, if he really thinks about it. At least the custom paisleys are a somewhat steady source of extra money, so the textiles classes weren't a total waste of time.

Right now, though, he's still got enough money in the bank to take care of the rent for the two months of summer that Joe has off from uni, and so, instead of applying to jobs, Rhys spends most of his time in the flat.

This is the inhumanly hot summer that seems to press down onto the city like a smothering haze, the kind that fills the streets with the stink of garbage bags rotting on the pavement, where the concrete of the streets is so hot you can feel the heat smoulder from it and envelop your legs. The kind of summer that Rhys can only possibly endure by living off iced drinks and cigarettes, keeping the blinds down and walking around naked except for the bare minimum.

Some days when he's not at work, Joe joins him, and then they drink cold fruit smoothies from the juice kiosk with plenty of vodka mixed in, listen to psychedelia, smoke spliffs and watch reruns of boring 80s sitcoms on TV. They spend all the money that isn't going into drugs or paying rent bidding on rare vinyl over the internet and take four showers a day each, in between which they do things that require them to take all those showers in the first place.

This is also the summer when both of them decide to take a break from dating for a while, and really, Rhys wouldn't want to have it any other way. He doesn't see why he should go out and make an effort to find himself a guy when Joe is right there and he can have him every single day, too, an ice water cold mouth and a body still warm and sweaty from the world outside their flat pressed against his own.

The entirety of that summer, they spend more time around each other fooling around than they do _not_ fooling around, and Rhys supposes that it comes naturally, that it's the only logical thing that could happen when they're basically naked around each other all day long and there's nothing else to do that doesn't require facing the murderous heat outside. He thinks about this in the shower, well, that and their whole friends with benefits relationship in general, the day after his mum called to see how he's doing. She asked about his degree, if he's planning to do anything with it, how his little paisley vintage record business is doing, and if he's found himself a nice man, and to all of those questions, Rhys couldn't do much other than shrug and give vague answers. He knows that he should consider himself lucky that his family is behind him no matter what he does, but he still wishes they would just stop, at least for a while. A little, he hates how he's supposedly an adult with a university degree and he still can't figure out what to do with anything. He wants to blame the mess of tangled feelings in the pit of his gut that he still can't untangle and doesn't really want to, the itching uncertainty that started out being about Joe but has now spread to everything else, it seems.

(When he gets out of the bath and finds Joe sitting on the sofa in his briefs, still wet from his earlier shower, though, Rhys drops all the feelings of confusion for just a few minutes. The feeling of the cool metal stud in Joe's tongue running down the side of his neck, licking along his collarbone, down his chest, lower, lower, Joe's hands tugging the towel from his hips, his fucking _mouth_ and the little noises that come from it, all that is more than worth it, Rhys thinks.)

Some of the nights when the air outside is slightly less dry and static with heat, when it's actually safe to leave the house for longer than three minutes at a time, they go out. The Junk Club or a different place, the pubs packed with bodies downing iced drinks to make the damp muddle of body warmth between them more bearable, or clubs where the heat is actually worse than the worst daytime temperatures and the only way to handle it is taking pills until you can't feel your body any more.

Wherever, but by the time they head home, Joe always has a girl on his arm, and this is different from what they'd been talking about, about not bothering with relationships. This is just a one time thing, and more than once, Rhys actually finds himself holding onto Joe's hips and pounding into him, licking and kissing along his sharp shoulder blades while Joe is face down or balls deep in some girl's cunt.

More often than not, though, when Joe has found himself a hookup for the night, when he's already got his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her arse in the middle of the club, because Joe has no sense of decency once he hits a certain level of drunk, Rhys takes a guy back to the flat himself.

Really, Rhys isn't all that picky when it comes to his taste in men. As long as they're not way out of his age range or morbidly ugly, he'll chat up the first guy who looks like he might be interested. Buy him a drink, keep the conversation to a shallow degree, mention the quality of the music and eventually ask him to dance. That's all he ever does in public with a guy, dance and _maybe_ a chaste kiss, because unlike Joe he has at least _some_ class, but then he doesn't hold back as soon as he's stepped out of the taxi with his guy of the night in tow and unlocked the door to the flat.

There's usually music playing by that point, whatever record Joe is into at that moment coming from his room, and that point is the point when Rhys pushes the guy into the hallway wall and whispers, “my flatmate, he doesn't mind,” before finally kissing him the way he wants to, deep and almost painfully. Rhys hasn't ever been the type to pull any sort of excuses, of wanting to have tea or coffee or to show a guy his record collection. No, when he's looking forward to getting fucked, he takes it straight to the bedroom. He's not the type to bother with much foreplay, either, the sooner he's naked and spread out with another body on top of him, the better. This is the way he likes it, fast and messy and relentlessly hard with a stranger's mouth moving at his ear, gasping out curses and insults the way other people would whisper compliments.

Rhys is loud during sex. This is a thing that he discovered when he was sixteen and had sex with another guy for the very first time, and also a thing that Joe had remarked upon after the third or fourth time they'd fucked, “so, question, am I very good at this or do you just start cussing and wailing as soon as someone puts a dick up your arse?”

He can't help himself, though, really, doesn't know how to hold it all back, and so he gasps and moans as much as he wants, howls like a wounded animal, an endless stream of “god, please, right there, fuck, do that again, harder,” interspersed by long strings of wordless groans. A little, it makes him feel like a cheap porno actress, just begging to be fucked, but then, it's not like he can turn it off. He likes seeing what it does to the guys he fucks, too, whether or not it turns them on and how they change the angle of their thrusts and scratch their fingernails deeply into his skin, like they're trying to get him to be as loud as possible, or maybe to find a way to actually shut him up. So Rhys writhes and digs his fingers into the sheets or the guy's shoulders, or braces his sweat-slippery hands on the headboard, and he whines and splutters nonsense when the mouth on his neck calls him a slut or sinks its teeth into his flesh, or when the guy thrusting into him hits a good spot.

He does all these things because it's really that good, definitely not because he's trying to get the message across to Joe that he doesn't need him, either. (The same way that the banging of the headboard into the wall that separates their rooms is most certainly not Joe's way of telling Rhys that he doesn't _need_ him to get laid. There is nothing passive-aggressive about either of them.)

(When it's over, when Rhys tucks himself under his guy's arm and presses his head into the crook of his neck, he doesn't think about how in the next room over, Joe and his girl are most likely in the same position. He doesn't pretend that the voice of the guy next to him is that bit higher and more boyish when he mumbles in his sleep, that his shoulders are a little slimmer and his skin a little paler. The morning after, Rhys stays in bed half asleep and half pretending to be until he's certain that both the girl and the guy have left, and only then does he get up and scuffle into the kitchen, still a little sore.

He slips into Joe's bed and they drink tea and compare their marks they got last night, little purple bruises on Rhys' throat and hips and scratches from long fingernails down Joe's back, lipstick smeared onto his skin and other traces of make-up smudged into his pillowcase.)

–

Somewhere from above them, the blue of a TV screen flickers out of a window into the cool night air like an unfocussed beam of light from a film projector and Rhys watches it like it's going to do something meaningful if he looks right into it long enough.

Where they are is a small staircase at the back door of the club they'd been to, a quiet place that's littered with bottle caps and soggy cigarette butts and leaves that had blown in. This is one of those last days of Autumn where it's not quite too cold yet to sit outside on the concrete, and it's also after the place closed down for the night already. It's after they'd both downed so many shots that Rhys is certain neither of them will remember anything the next morning, after he'd had to drag Joe down from dancing on a table and after Joe had thrown up into a storm drain outside, just barely missing the tips of his shoes, and then went back inside and ordered another two shots of vodka to gargle with. Nothing out of the usual, then.

Rhys stops staring up at the light and instead watches Joe, the way he rolls a spliff with a look of drunken concentration on his face. He lights up and Rhys watches his throat work as he takes a drag.

“God,” Rhys says, doesn't really mean to, but it comes out either way and it's how he feels, too. “God, you're just.”

Joe laughs. “I'm just what?”

“I don't know. Just so.” The sentence doesn't feel finished, but Rhys can't think of a way to end it. He points one hand into the direction of where the cherry is glowing near Joe's fingers, and says, “pass that over here, will you.”

“Got a better idea.” With that, Joe leans over and closes the small space between them, pushes Rhys down just the slightest bit and then coaxes his lips open with one hand pressed to his jaw. He takes another deep drag and breathes a whiff of smoke into the cavity of Rhys' mouth.

Rhys gasps a little at the shiver that passes down his spine, a shiver that's most certainly from the cold edges of the stairs pressing into his back, even when his insides are warm with inebriation and Joe's breath is also warm, when his body is radiating warmth even into the places where they're not touching each other, it's the cold that makes Rhys shiver. Really.

He sucks all the smoke in, swallows it deep into his lungs, and then when he exhales, he says, “God,” for the third time.

Joe looks at him, pupils blown wide and red, and laughs again, drunken and cocky, like he's satisfied with himself. This close, Rhys can smell him, the cologne he insists on wearing, the weed on his breath and the faint stench of vomit still clinging to him, and it's disgusting, really, but it still doesn't make him want to pull away. He rests his hand on Joe's knee, mainly because it feels useless just lying there next to him, feels the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his trousers.

“You think we're ever going to stop this?” he asks, and it seems like the completely obvious thing to ask.

This is after Joe has graduated uni as well, after they've moved out of their shoddy flat in Southend and moved into an equally shoddy flat in London, and it's after Joe has started dating Rhys' sister, a thing which Rhys is surprisingly all right with, even though his initial reaction had been to threaten to rip Joe's balls out if he ever tells Harry about them, or in fact, ever hurts her in any other way.

For a second, Joe doesn't reply, just sucks on his spliff and stares up at wherever, possibly at the same light from the window. “Nah,” he says then, along with a huge wad of fog from his mouth. “I think we're just going to keep on doing this, this fuck buddy with benefits thing. Even when we're married, just going to keep on.” He covers Rhys' smaller hand with his own, it's just a bit forceful but he's not pushing it away.

Rhys laughs, a little, and isn't sure why, there's just something about the statement. “You actually want to get married.” It's not a question, it just sounds like one.

“Someday, I guess. When we're middle age and no one else would want us, and getting married doesn't sound boring any more, yeah, I'd marry her then.”

“Very chivalrous of you.”

Joe puffs out another smoke cloud and shrugs. “You're probably gonna be married by then, too. Find yourself a nice guy, not some art student knob, probably the last guy you'd expect you'd ever get with, and you're gonna fall in love and marry him.” He giggles, that annoying drunken giggle that definitely doesn't ever let Rhys' heart get caught in his throat. “Guess that's to say I'm happy for future-you.”

“I'm not sure if it's even legal for me to get married to a guy.”

“I don't know, you're the poof. Thought you'd be informed about this stuff.”

Rhys looks down at the pavement and at where their knees and the sides of their shoes are almost touching. “Never really considered getting married.”

They don't say anything after that for a while, and it's the comfortable kind of silence where just the lull that comes with the wall of body heat that's been building itself between them is more than enough. Joe keeps smoking his spliff and blows thin threads of smoke into Rhys' face, and Rhys goes back to watching the TV screen light spill out of the window overhead. It's like that until a few minutes in when the light goes out and the street just gets that much darker, and Joe nudges his shoulder into Rhys'.

“We should go home.”

Rhys nods after a couple of seconds, honestly, the hypnotising flicker and the alcohol have made him feel a little sleepy. He looks at the cherry of the spliff glowing down near Joe's hands, almost burned down to where it would lick at his fingers, and says, “hey, give me another hit.”

Joe nods, and takes the last deep drag and throws the butt down to the curb. Then his hands are on Rhys' face again, both their mouths popped open like fish lips, this close but not touching. Rhys breathes the smoke from Joe's mouth, almost sucks it out of him, really, and it makes him want to laugh without knowing why.

–

(Rhys is most certainly just fucking Joe until he finds the right guy that Joe was talking about. Really.)

–

This is yet another early morning, and where they are is Rhys' room. This is still after a lot of things, and it's also after they'd spent the better part of the night all over each other with hands and mouths and after they'd both come twice and then collapsed into the mattress. The smell of sweat and sex hangs heavy in the room the way dust or smoke does, and they're both utterly exhausted, aching in their limbs and chest. Joe is splayed in the middle of the bed, feet dangling over the edge, and Rhys lights himself a cigarette. When he takes a drag, it aches in his throat, and when he speaks, his voice comes out from hoarse.

“Fuck,” he says, mainly because he feels the need to say something and “fuck” is the only thing that seems appropriate.

“Yeah, fuck.” Joe turns his head upwards to look at him and reaches out a hand. “Pass me a fag, yeah?”

Rhys shakes his head. “You're just going to get ash all over my bed.”

“I let you smoke in my room all the time, come on.”

“Yeah, because your room's a tip.” Rhys laughs at his own comment, can't stop himself, and adds, “can't believe there's girls out there who'd actually want to have sex in there.”

“You take back what you just said about your sister, hey.”

“Leave my sister out of this.”

Joe just grins up at Rhys from where he's lying and pokes at his bare thigh. “No, really, come here,” he says, and Rhys shuffles down the bed until they're side by side.

He lets a long line of ash from his fag drip down onto the sheets, and Joe says, “god, you're a twat. Now give that over here.”

He takes a deep drag from the cigarette and then rests his free hand on Rhys' stomach where his shirt had come undone. Rhys hadn't bothered with taking it off earlier that night, just let Joe rip open most of the buttons to allow access, and now the silk fabric is sticky on his skin with the same stench of bodily fluids that's hanging in the room, but he still can't be bothered with taking it off.

For a few seconds, they lie there in silence, and then Joe says, voice already drowsy, “you know, Rhys, in the morning this is going to be back to normal. I've got a girlfriend and you've got, you're going to be back to looking for that one guy, but now.”

He pushes his lips onto the part of Rhys' face that's closest to him, clumsy and sleepy, and this is odd. This is different, it's odd enough that they're talking after the sex at all, and Rhys really doesn't mind at all.

“It doesn't matter now.” Joe reaches over to take the cigarette from between Rhys' lips and sucks it down to the filter. He reaches over and pushes the butt out on the side of the bed, and Rhys pretends to ignore it, and then he says, “so, I don't know, can we...”

The way he says it, it sounds like he doesn't know how to continue, like he can't find the words, but Rhys understands what he means, so he wraps one arm around Joe. “Yeah, sure we can.”

Joe turns and pushes his face all the way into Rhys' chest, and Rhys can feel his breath against his skin, the way it slowly stills, and he feels like everything's all right just like this. Really, really.


End file.
